William Blair Investment Management (IM) has announced the launch of the Global Leaders Select strategy, with the appointment of Chandan Khanna as co-portfolio manager alongside Hugo Scott-Gall, head of William Blair’s global equity team.

The Global Leaders Select strategy is a concentrated portfolio of 25-35 leading global companies which combine quality and growth characteristics. The strategy is benchmark-agnostic and aims to deliver strong long-term returns for investors through conviction, concentration, and compounding.

While Global Leaders Select is a newly launched strategy, Khanna has a five-year track record of delivering strong performance with a similar approach, according to a statement by William Blair IM.

Khanna (pictured) has more than 15 years of experience as a public equity investor. Most recently, he was senior partner and portfolio manager at Eighteen48 Partners, managing the Sixteen02 Global Equity Fund. Prior to this, he was the lead global equity portfolio manager at Rezayat Investments and held roles at Capital Group and Morgan Stanley, having started his career at KPMG.

Global Leaders Select is part of William Blair’s Leaders platform, a series of actively managed equity portfolios focused on high-quality companies with strong competitive advantages, pricing power, and earnings growth. This includes William Blair’s Emerging Market Leaders, International Leaders and Global Leaders strategies.

William Blair Investment Management’s Global Leaders Select strategy has been seeded with $225 million in a separately managed account. Khanna will work alongside Hugo Scott-Gall and William Blair’s global equity team to manage the strategy.

Khanna commented: “William Blair has a long history of combining deep fundamental research with a forward-looking, global mindset aligning with this strategy’s focus on identifying best-in-class or emerging best-in-class companies which offer attractive growth and underappreciated earnings power. I look forward to continuing delivering for the firm’s clients.”